What Are We Going Back To?
As we sit in the safety of our homes, terrified of what possible immediate dangers await us between disease and finances, most of us can’t help but wonder what the post pandemic world will look like. If what we crave is for everything to go back to the way it was, then we are going to be sorely disappointed on many fronts. First of all we will not be able to crowd into anywhere like bars, amusement parks, sporting events and a massive list of anything the like. Secondly the economic damage will last for so many years that Covid-19 is going to be one of the most common words in any language for a century.
Touching on the world business comeback, the word bounce will not apply. Put away the financial effects of not being able or wanting to go any place where social distancing isn’t possible. Consider the automobile industry. How many people or families are going to be able or want to afford the expense of a new vehicle? The numbers are going to drop so drastically for what is currently being manufactured that the whole process will have to be overhauled. The economic impact of that many job loses is staggering.
Consider the travel industry. How many people are going to want to go any place for a long time not to mention spend the money on it? The job loses of that activity goes far beyond the pilots and stewardesses. Baggage handlers, mechanics, check-in clerks, janitors are just the tip of the iceberg. We haven’t thought of travel agents or the airplane manufactures ripple effect yet. How about the tourist dollars at the destinations? Money is about to take on a whole new meaning. It is a curiosity to see what kind of equalization is going to happen to wages and consumer goods in the next twelve to eighteen months.
We all know that nobody can predict what’s going to happen in the near future let alone a distant one during relative normal times. A couple simple but complex questions are; how are we going to manage all of it, and what do we want it to look like? The current train wreck we are currently in will look like a light fender bender compared to what it would look like if our planet becomes inhospitable to live on. Not enough of us realize or care for the need of revamping the entire system as a whole. Air, ground and water pollution are not going to take care of themselves and we as the custodians of this ecosystem have not done near enough to live in harmony with natures balance.
The most effective strategy to organize a mess is to take it apart almost completely and then put it back together in an optimum way. We’ve been given no choice but to put it back together but what is the greatest ecologically sustainable approach to do it? The scary question is who is going to decide what course of action we will take? Do we trust the governments to have the planets best interests in mind or their own? I believe that it is imperative to learn which scientists have the most sound plans and demand we follow their insights. Over the past decades scientific discovery and advice has fallen on deaf ears but hopefully there has been granted one last chance to redeem the ignorant arrogance of man to restore what never belonged to us.
If what the majority desire is the comfortable safety of what was over what should be, then all is lost before the end of our children’s lives. Let’s hope that rational sense overwhelms the selfish need to cling to what has been considered desirable. The belief that material wealth is the key to happiness has been one of the most damaging strains on the environment the world has ever known. Wasted resources that usually end up in landfills or littered on the face of the future’s earth. Some may claim that they got good use out of it before it was discarded, but the truth is very few take in to consideration how many of that item are sold around the world then wasted. Everything should be categorized into two groups; needs and wants. Wants can be enjoyable as I can personally attest to but the planet needs to heal and adjustment is common practice for our durable species. I don’t think anyone wants to adjust to a polluted junk pile of a planet which can’t produce enough plant life to sustain even half the existing creatures currently residing here. Including us.
In most cases communism seems to have failed, but if revisited with the planets safety in mind maybe we can come up with some kind of communist/capitalist economic hybrid strategy that eliminates waste. This all sounds extreme but a change in the mental perception of how we do things on this sphere needs to be revisited. The existing generations that live here have it the hardest as we’ve been conditioned to know one reality, but the very young and people yet to be born won’t see the difference. Let’s build a plan to set them off on the right track, then we can go to our graves with a guilt free conscience believing we gave it everything we could to right the ship.
Back to the way it was is a death sentence but making it our responsibility to transform the function of the prevailing global guardians will change us from villains to hero’s. It will put us in the history books as the ones who did the hardest part. The question is how many can truly be strong enough to carry this through to completion? Like in any pilgrimage we’ve experienced we carried each other when someone slips. I believe we can do it and that scares me because complacency is and has always been our biggest enemy.
April 2020
